A new bill has been introduced in the House and Senate to give federal employees a 4.3% raise next year as a way to close the pay gap between the federal and private sectors.
For the past several decades, federal workers’ pay has lagged that of those in the private sector by double-digit numbers. According to the latest report issued late last year, federal workers made nearly 25% less than those doing the same job in the private sector.
The Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act, or FAIR Act, introduced by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly, would help close the gap by giving federal workers next year a base pay raise of 3.3% plus 1% locality pay.
Another bill, the Equal COLA Act, also introduced by Ranking Member Connolly, would also help federal workers breathe a little easier by eliminating an unfair penalty for Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) retirees.
Under the current law, the cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security, Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), and FERS are all calculated based on the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). If CPI is 2% or less, the FERS COLA is the same as the CSRS and Social Security COLA. But if the CPI is between 2.01% and 3%, the FERS COLA is 2%. If the CPI is greater than 3%, then the COLA for FERS is 1% less than the CSRS COLA.
This unfair penalty means that FERS retirees will lose $128 a year just for 2025, assuming the same average pension. But for those who retired four years ago with the same average pension, their pension would have lost more than $1,000 to rising costs because the losses are compounded.
This places FERS retirees further away from keeping pace with the cost of living. Our nation’s public servants shouldn’t see their hard-earned retirement benefits eroded by a COLA arbitrarily lower than the real rate of inflation.
AFGE thanks Ranking Member Connolly for introducing the bills and urges members of Congress to do the right thing and pass these pieces of legislation.
Source: AFGE
Image: Pixabay
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